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“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” Mary Shelley said after writing ‘Frankenstein’. She focused her mind on writing and used the left hemisphere of her brain, the creative side, which many people of the 1800s would not dare to do. The reason for this fear of using one of the many parts of our brains for a career or hobby was due to the fact that anyone who used this part were looked at as rather “crazy” which we now refer to as mentally ill. Mental illness was not always treated as an illness and was treated as a choice these people made and were, more or less, committing a crime, socially and legally. Frankenstein can be analyzed and certain …show more content…
The parents would lock their children in a room that no one would use to shield their siblings away from the “evil” which were their brothers and sisters. The mentally ill were practically disowned at birth and considered a monster. Since people were not used to seeing mental illness or anyone that showed they were different in anyway Mary Shelley may have been making a point about how people treated outsiders and people with odd/different qualities. This could explain the many times people ran away from Frankenstein’s monster in the book, Mary Shelley was making a point on how pure everyone was. There were “homes” for mentally ill people. These homes consisted of psychologists and nurses. There was no light in the homes, fresh air, no food and people were mistreated and punished. Anyone who showed anytime of mental disability (creativity, social problems, unintelligence, learning issues, tempers, etc.) were admitted and they were not screened or tested. The mentally ill and criminally insane were forced to live together and that caused people of that time, that were considered normal, to associate mentally ill people with criminals and murderers causing people to, once again, not have any tolerance towards anyone that appeared
Did you ever notice that human nature revolves around needs, desires, and wants? There are different types of needs, such as safety, social, basic needs. These desires and impulses gives us our survival and the ability to function in the environment we live in. Our subconscious mind is responsible for the decisions we make, and such impulses makes us commit actions we have no control of. In literature, we are able to understand and judge the character’s behavior more so than our own.
Isolation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, has several themes imbedded in the text. One major theme is of isolation. Many of the characters experience some time of isolation. The decisions and actions of some of these characters are the root cause of their isolation. They make choices that isolate themselves from everyone else.
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein the protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a monster. The monster in the novel is deprived of a normal life due to his appearance. Like the creature, some serial killers today are killers due to the same rejection. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns that a childhood of abuse and neglect will often result in evil actions.
Victor Frankenstein needs therapy and a Prozac prescription. On second thought, the whole Frankenstein family is in desperate need of an intervention. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contains passages that push the limits of societal taboos. Overt suggestions of incest, Oedipal Fixation, and discord in his unconscious mind combine to sculpt Victor into an overachieving mad scientist. Shelley’s protagonist is a Pandora’s Box of unhealthy behaviors driven by the unconscious to sublimate his oedipal complex into scientific experiments resulting in self-destructive episodes and a monster.
Emotional isolation in Frankenstein is the most pertinent and prevailing theme throughout the novel. This theme is so important because everything the monster does or feels directly relates to his poignant seclusion. The effects of this terrible burden have progressively damaging results upon the monster, and indirectly cause him to act out his frustrations on the innocent. The monster's emotional isolation makes him gradually turn worse and worse until evil fully prevails. This theme perpetuates from Mary Shelley's personal life and problems with her father and husband, which carry on into the work and make it more realistic.(Mellor 32) During the time she was writing this novel, she was experiencing the emotional pangs of her newborn's death and her half-sister's suicide. These events undoubtedly affected the novel's course, and perhaps Shelley intended the monster's deformed body to stand as a symbol for one or both of her losses. There are numerous other parallels to the story and to her real life that further explain why the novel is so desolate and depressing. Emotional isolation is the prime theme of the novel due to the parallels shared with the novel and Shelley's life, the monster's gradual descent into evil, and the insinuations of what is to come of the novel and of Shelley's life.
One in the Same The creature, a creation by the selfish and glory seeking scientist, Victor notes, “Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames”( Shelley 186). Before vanishing, the creature expresses these last words to communicate his frustration toward all of the circumstances in his life. He describes all the challenges in his life as “burning miseries” because they have been with him his entire life, and they force him to live his life in ways he did not imagine.
A mother’s unconditional love is the constant foundation in the variable equation of successful families. But what happens when this natural instinct doesn’t manifest itself, and all a mother sees when she looks upon her new baby is an ugly, loud, smelly, and completely parasitic creature? Without the interference of the illogical sentiment of selfless love, a mother would always reject the almost unrecognizably human infant who appeared monstrous. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, lacked this motherly instinct, a fact that she unhappily discovered at the birth of her first child, a two-month premature infant, who lived six short weeks, and was never graced with a name. Today, Shelley would probably be diagnosed with postpartum depression, and treated accordingly before her condition could escalate to its apex of postpartum psychosis, a disorder associated with in infanticide and suicide. It is uncertain as to whether Shelley ever reached this point, and the world may never know if her baby died as a victim to Shelley's inner monster, from side effects of neglect, or from complications due to prematurity. Regardless of what happened to Shelly and her baby historically, it seems evident that writing Frankenstein served as Shelley’s only venue, cast in fiction, to understand her terrifying and dehumanizing illness. If Frankenstein is read through the premise that it served as Shelley’s coping mechanism in which she played out her experience with postpartum depression, one can interpret each character frame in the story as the structure of Shelley’s self-excavation process, each delving to deeper level of Mary Shelley’s psyche.
In Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein illness seems to be a way for the main character to separate from society. When people are sick they tend to remove or distance themselves from others. In Frankenstein’s case, he falls into a deteriorating physical state whenever he comes into contact with the monster. His physical conditions seem to be directly linked to any confrontation with the monster. It can be seen that Frankenstein subconsciously uses sickness as an escape from his guilt and responsibilities of the monster. Subsequently, illness can be seen as a way for Frankenstein to hide and forget the actions he indirectly committed. Although in reality, illness is not effective because instead of improving Frankenstein's conditions it only masked it while he continued to deteriorate after every encounter with the monster, finally leading to death.
In the novel Frankenstein, the author, Mary Shelley writes about a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who brings to life a human- like creature. Viewing this book through a psychoanalytic lens uncovers the many layers that make up this text and the characters. The psychoanalytic theory deals with a person’s underlying desire, most famously, the oedipal complex. The oedipal complex is the belief that all people possess the desire to partake in affectionate relations with a parent of the opposite sex. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victors conscious and subconscious to suggest that Victor possesses the oedipal complex, and that he feels intense guilt for the monster that he has brought to life.
Frankenstein, a frame story by Mary Shelley and published in 1818, documents the struggles between Victor Frankenstein and the Creature that he created told through the letters of Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret. Beginning with the creation of the Creature, Victor’s life and mental state degrade as he battles with guilt and responsibility while slipping in and out of sickness. While some think of Victor’s recurring illness as a thematic device showing the similarities between physical and mental separation, an actual disease contacted by his extensive time around rotting flesh likely carries the blame.
Insanity is perceived as to be mentally ill or being extremely foolish or irrational. Insanity can also be developed from being greatly influenced by your emotions. It is not something that you will usually notice yourself to be, but to others, they may envision you as being insane, Many characters in books may seem insane to the readers through the choices they make and the actions executed by them. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the scientist Victor Frankenstein is distinguished as being insane. He was not born insane, it was until after he made some choices that would change him. In the novel Frankenstein, insanity was caused by Victor Frankenstein’s decisions and the guilt resulted from it.
Isolation is often a result of choosing to seek refuge in solitude, however, in many cases, it is a result of brutality from a surrounding environment. In Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel, Frankenstein,a gruesome and painful story serves as a cautionary tale in order to prevent another from a similar downfall. Although Victor Frankenstein is the narrator for the majority of the novel, the audience learns of the destruction that has followed his decisions as well as the forced estrangement upon those he has encountered. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses relatable characters that reflect the harsh superficial aspects of society.
“Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love” (Richard Yates). Everyone has a different perspective on life and therefore all have different opinions on what a human is. Is it the qualities someone possesses? Is being a human about what is inside or outside? ”Humans are self-aware social mammals generally possessing the ability to reason, speak, and use complex tools.” (Santi Tafarella). Frankenstein is also known as A Modern Prometheus. Prometheus was the creator of mankind in Greek Mythology, which relates to Victors character in Frankenstein. Between Victor and the monster, the creature has more human qualities; considering he has a desire to be accepted
From the beginning of time in history, women have always been portrayed as and seen as the submissive sex. Women especially during the time period of the 1800s were characterized as passive, disposable, and serving an utilitarian function. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prime example displaying the depiction of women. The women in Frankenstein represent the treatment of women in the early 1800’s. Shelley’s incorporation of suffering and death of her female characters portrays that in the 1800’s it was acceptable. The women in the novel are treated as property and have minimal rights in comparison to the male characters. The feminist critic would find that in Frankenstein the women characters are treated like second class citizens. The three brutal murders of the innocent women are gothic elements which illustrates that women are inferior in the novel. Mary Shelley, through her novel Frankenstein, was able to give the reader a good sense of women’s role as the submissive sex, through the characters experiences of horrific events including but not limited to brutal murder and degradation, which is illuminated by her personal life experiences and time period of romanticism.
Essay 2 Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything.